Many users of computer systems become frustrated with excessive screen clutter. Some users dislike an application window that is cluttered with unnecessary graphics. Dialog box windows especially tend to suffer from this problem. For example, some operating systems provide keyboard cues such as focus indicators and keyboard accelerators. A focus indicator is typically a dashed-line box drawn on the screen within a button or around text that currently has the focus of the window. The focus indicator aids keyboard users identify what function will be activated by depressing the “enter” key on the keyboard. The focus indicator is unnecessary to users that rely heavily on a pointing device, such as a mouse, to input commands to the computer.
Keyboard accelerators are small lines that underline particular letters of words displayed in a control window. Usually, the underlined letter is depressed in combination with a keyboard key, such as the “Alt” key on keyboards commonly used with the Microsoft Windows operating system, to perform a function. Keyboard accelerators allow a user to select a control without having to navigate a pointing device to it. However, the keyboard accelerators are again of little benefit to a heavy mouse user. Moreover, the keyboard accelerators can sometimes confuse the novice keyboard user because the use of the keyboard accelerators is not intuitive. Accordingly, a need exists for a system or method for displaying or not displaying keyboard cues, such as focus indicators and keyboard accelerators, based on whether a user is predominantly a keyboard user or a mouse user.